1. Grigory Kotovsky made a career from being a gangster and bank robber to eventually becoming a Red Army commander and member of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Union.
21 Facts About Grigory Kotovsky
1. 2.
Grigory Kotovsky's father was a Russian citizen of Polish descent and his mother an ethnic Russian.
3.
Grigory Kotovsky's father was forced to move to Bessarabia and become a Russian burgess.
4.
Grigory Kotovsky was raised by his godmother, Sophia Challe, the daughter of a Belgian engineer and friend of Grigory Kotovsky's father, and a godfather, the landowner Manuk-bey.
5.
Grigory Kotovsky intended eventually to send his godson to Germany for advanced agricultural courses, but his dreams were cut short by his death in 1902.
6.
Grigory Kotovsky was fired for various acts of theft, fraternization, and other misdeeds.
7.
Grigory Kotovsky soon deserted from the military and organized his own band of robbers, conducting raids and setting estates on fire.
8.
Grigory Kotovsky was generally sheltered and supported by the peasants, who regarded him as a sort of Robin Hood.
9.
On January 18,1906, Grigory Kotovsky was finally arrested, but managed to escape after six months in the Chisinau prison.
10.
Grigory Kotovsky began serving his sentence at Nerchinsk katorga until 1911.
11.
Grigory Kotovsky later spent more time in various prisons across the Russian Empire:.
12.
At katorga, Grigory Kotovsky cooperated with prison authorities and was put in charge of a 10-man team of construction workers who were building a railroad.
13.
However, it was decided not to release bandits on the day of the amnesty, and on February 27,1913, Grigory Kotovsky managed to escape from katorga and return home to Bessarabia.
14.
Grigory Kotovsky then became the leader of a local criminal gang of raiders.
15.
On June 25,1916, Grigory Kotovsky was unable to escape from police after another raid.
16.
Grigory Kotovsky was surrounded by a squad of secret police and, after being wounded in the chest, he was arrested.
17.
On death row, Grigory Kotovsky wrote letters of repentance and begged to be sent to the front lines.
18.
Grigory Kotovsky joined the Russian Communist Party in 1920.
19.
Grigory Kotovsky was killed near Odessa by his deputy and friend Seider Meyer in 1925.
20.
Grigory Kotovsky was then buried in a mausoleum in Birzula, which was renamed Kotovsk in 1935, a town included in the newly created Odessa Oblast.
21.
Grigory Kotovsky appears as an important character in the novel "Chapayev and Void" by postmodern Russian writer Viktor Pelevin.